109 Clinton Staffers Were Targeted By Russia In A Single Month
But don’t worry, Republicans say the Russians weren’t trying to pick sides.
The Senate Intelligence Committee held their first public hearing on the Russian hack investigation Thursday and it seems that a piece of information that was drowned out in the chaos of the day’s news cycle. During the testimony, it was revealed that in a single month, the email accounts of at least 109 Hillary Clinton staffers were targeted by Russian military hackers last year.
Cybersecurity expert, Professor Thomas Rid of King’s College in London detailed the bombshell efforts by the Russians:
“In early March, GRU began to train its well-established, semi-automated targeting tools from worldwide military and diplomatic targets to US political targets. Between 10 March and 7 April, GRU targeted at least 109 Clinton campaign staffers with 214 individual phishing emails (with eight more attempts on 12 and 13 May).
“Thirty-six times Clinton staffers clicked a malicious link (the success rate of actually breaching the account after a victim clicked this link is 1-in-7). Russian intelligence targeted Jake Sullivan in at least 14 different attempts beginning on 19 March, each time with a different malicious link against two of his email addresses. GRU targeted Hillary Clinton’s personal email account at least two times in March, but the available data show that she did not fall for the password reset trick.
“The military intelligence agency also targeted DNC staffers with 16 emails between 15 March and 11 April, and 3 DNC staffers were tricked into clicking the treacherous “reset password” button on 6 April 2016.”
Rid also said that if John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, had been using two level email security the last month of the campaign would have looked much different.
